TECH GIANTS PLEDGE TO SEEK MORE DIVERSE GROUP OF EMPLOYEES

Technology giants have been lifting the curtains on the diversity statistics of their workforces recently and the pictures aren’t pretty: the overwhelming majority working at Facebook, Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn are male and white, or male and Asian.

But the good news is that the companies’ sudden transparency comes with new intentions to seek talent in a wider range of places and to help train students of color in computer sciences.

Facebook last week disclosed that 69 percent of its global workforce is male and that 57 percent of its U.S. workforce is white and another 34 percent Asian. Only 2 percent of its U.S. workers are African American and only 4 percent are Hispanic.

But before we get all hot under the collar, those percentages are almost identical to Google’s and LinkedIn’s and Yahoo’s. Google disclosed last month that 70 percent of its global workforce is male. Meanwhile, exactly 91 percent of employees are white or Asian at each of these three giants, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. Yahoo is only a miniscule better at 89 percent. African Americans are 2 percent of employees at each of them. (see above chart for the percentage statistics of each company.)